Live Blog and Open Thread: Republican Convention, Day 2

Oh, there is nothing like a Randian man to get your juices flowing, except for maybe a Randian Zombie. My question is this, if your average zombie considers brains the breakfast of champions, what the hell does an Ayn Rand zombie eat? Surely the grey matter of fellow Rand followers can’t provide the proper nutrition for a zombie of Ayn Rand’s caliber.

Perhaps that is why the Ryan zombie prefers the brains of the poor, old, and sick? Eureka, that must be the real motive behind the GOP Rand worshipers pro-life stance! The 99%, its whats for dinner.

Few Items of Note…

Hey, as I was reading through my RSS feeds I found some articles and links that I thought would be of interest to you. I still don’t think I can stomach the RNC tonight. I just don’t think I have the energy to process the hate…so if anyone is able to sit through the crapfest, please drop a comment or two.

Yeah, he is on to something…read the entire post, I will just give you the final kick,

From “All the news that’s fit to print” to “please delete after you read” and cannot “go into detail because it is an intelligence matter”: that’s the gap between the New York Times’s marketed brand and its reality.

Over the years, and recently in a few posts this month, I’ve mentioned signs that the mainstream press is adjusting to the realities of “post-truth politics.”

Everyone in the press is happiest, safest-feeling, and most comfortable when in the mode of he-said, she-said. “The president’s critics claim that he was born in Kenya; administration spokesmen deny the charge.” But when significant political players are willing to say things that flat are not true — and when they’re not slowed down by demonstrations of their claims’ falseness — then reporters who stick to he-said, she-said become accessories to deception. This is the problem the Atlantic’s James Bennet discussed in a dispatch from Tampa yesterday, concerning the Republicans’ false-but-endlessly-repeated claim that the Obama administration is coddling welfare recipients by dropping requirements that they work.

Here are the rest of the links I have to share with you, in link dump fashion because I am feeling a little light headed, my blood sugar must be falling. Anyway, think of this as an open thread. After I feed my brain maybe I can tackle that convention down in Tampa…but I am not promising anything.

Tonight at the RNC, Paul Ryan will be nominated and give his big speech. The audience will also hear from Mike Huckabee and Condoleezza Rice. Will Huck go off the reservation and defend Todd Akin? Wouldn’t that be fun?

Just a guess but I think what Fallows may say is that some in the media are stepping up to the challenge of constantly rebutting the post truth Rmoney campaign. For example, a headline in the LA Times today literally said they were “lying” in their ads.

I just got a call from Kat. She’s keeping her phone going by charging it on her computer. They won’t be able to start getting the power back on until midday tomorrow when the winds die down. She might try to go someplace in the quarter tomorrow where they have electricity, and then she might be able to get on-line for awhile and charge up her computer and phone.

I went through Gloria when it hit Boston. It supposedly wasn’t that bad by the time it got to us, but a telephone poll fell in front of my house and I had no power for about 5 days. It was awful. I’ve been it plenty of blizzards though. We get really high winds and flooding with nor’easters. I actually landed in Boston for the first time in the midst of a nor’easter with 90 mph winds.

It took a couple weeks of false welfare ads, and a full day at the GOP convention premised on the idea that President Obama believes successful companies are doled out to lucky business owners like heavenly manna. But for all intents and purposes the political press has placed the Romney campaign at a crossroads.

Either it can proceed with these two lines of attack — which, let’s face it, are now the tentpoles holding up his entire campaign — or it can capitulate; not necessarily confess to having done anything out of bounds, but just drop the lines in order to avoid more and more stories about how mendacious the attacks are.

As of yesterday, the campaign seemed pretty content to carry on as it has been. Maybe that’ll change — but whatever Boston decides to do will, I think, have genuinely significant consequences.

If Romney relents, it’s a big deal for both the obvious reason that candidates looks terrible when they backpedal. But also because he’d have to return to old, ineffective themes, or find new and inspiring things to run on, which he pretty clearly doesn’t have.

On the other hand if he ignores all the pushback from the press, the political establishment will be facing something very new: a candidate — not his surrogates or outside supporters, but the top of the ticket — ignoring fact checkers, traditional campaign reporters, and even a few conservatives, all of whom have determined and publicly declared the attacks false.

That effectively pits the media against the Romney campaign in tests of will and influence. And it’s disconcerting to imagine that a determined media might not be able to effectively neutralize a presidential campaign intent on flooding the airwaves with false attacks. But that’s where we might find ourselves in the next couple weeks.

Crazed GOP cultists seemed to love them some Aqua Buddha. It was hard to stomach. I muted most of it.

I’m still feeling wiped out from last night, too. I didn’t hold up long enough to watch Frothy Mix, Ann Stepford, or Macy’s newest Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon ( Christie ) .

I plan to watch the Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver tonight as he gives the country a lesson in “Catholic Social Teaching According to Ayn Rand”. Oh, I forgot – he’s running away from St. Ayn as fast as he can these days, isn’t he? Well, he can run, but his long record of Rand worship can’t be hidden. He’s on tape saying she shaped his moral beliefs and philosophy, as BB has posted before. Does it get much uglier than that?

Still, I confess I am drawn to Ryan like a moth to a flame. He’s just so hot. 😉

I really have such a bad attitude with this RNC thing. I can’t watch it…not one minute of it. Tonight I have a football game to go to. My daughter is singing the national anthem…so I will miss the Money speech. My thanks and appreciation to you and the rest of the commentators for watching the BS for me.

What makes this all noteworthy is who Fournier is. He’s well respected in Washington journalism, having worked as the Associated Press’s Washington correspondent — where he was called on first in many presidential press conferences — before becoming editor in chief of the National Journal Group. Having him come out and explicitly charge the Romney campaign with race-baiting will make this a safer topic among some of the top-shelf commentator and journalist types who might otherwise have shied away from it.

So far the NYT, Washington Post, and LA Time are calling the ads false. Even Politico goes partway to saying that. But Romney may just keep doing it as long as the lies are working. He lies every time he opens his mouth anyway.

McCain needs to retire. He thought Barack should have gone to war in Iran while we were still in Iraq and Afghanistan? The man is WAY ON PAST his prime. I’m sick of these war hawks and if Mitt Romney believes we need to go back to Iraq and continue fighting in Afghanistan while agitating in Iran, he needs to send some of his sons over there to fight. This goddam elist warhawking is nuts.

Me too Ralph. I cast the only vote I’ve cast for the GOP to vote for McCain, in protest of Obama.To hear McCain basically say he would have intervened in Iran scares the shit out of me. Man I regret that vote with every fiber of my being.

BTW….I have a family member going to Afghanistan next week and another going in November and a 3rd whose deployment schedule has been delayed to the first of the year. I’ve had several family members go to Iraq & Afghanistan, one of those served 3 tours, and we’re all scared to death that we’re going to lose one of our children before this bullshit war is over. Enough folks have given their lives over the GWB admininstration lies.

I regret the only vote I ever cast for a Republican, too ( a protest vote for McCain in 2008 ) . I think his presidency would have been a disaster. “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran.” God, what was I thinking?

Yep…..Obviously, he would have attacked Iran and gone into Syria had he been POTUS. McCain should know that our Armed Forces, while the best in the world, are over extended. Many of these soldiers have done multiple tours. We should never have gone into Iraq and we should have come out of Afghanistan long ago. If Romney had his way, we would still be in Iraq and we’d be increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. These guys are all batshit crazy.

Wow, my sentiments exactly. I did the same thing because I was so mad but he is just crazy. I didn’t hear anything from McCain tonight that sounded remotely sane. I had DDS..Democratic Deranged Syndrome! The Dems let me down and forced me to vote for a crazy man in 2008!

What McCain & Romney’s warmongering position proves is how tone deaf they are. They’re in that echo chamber of FOX & Friends and they don’t even pretend to listen to ordinary Americans. American’s are relieved we’re out of Iraq and glad that we’re decreasing troops in Afghanistan. We’re sick of sending our loved ones to risk their lives and die for the GOP’s sacred cow, their beloved Defense Industry.

“The right way to balance a budget really has two prongs,” Romney said during a wide-raning interview with Pelley last week. “One is to do those things that encourage the growth of the economy. So, you do things to get small businesses growing and adding– adding jobs. But you also go through and say which of those things that you should take out of the budget that are no longer essential. The easiest for me to knock out is Obamacare. It’s about $100 billion a year. We simply can’t afford it. But there are other subsidies that I think you’re going to find that we take out.”

Asked for specifics, Romney listed “the subsidy for PBS, the subsidy for Amtrak, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts” and “the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Humanities.”

Pressed by Pelley to expand on his answer, Romney also noted changes to how the nation funds Medicaid.

“Let’s keep going,” he said. “$100 billion a year comes by taking Medicaid, which is the health care program for the poor as well as food stamps, and housing vouchers, and sending those back to the states, and growing them at the rate of inflation, or inflation plus 1 percent in the case of Medicaid,” said Romney. “And I think states can do a better job managing those – those efforts – than can the federal government.”

So, if parents don’t have the wherewithal to take their children to arts productions, let them watch junk TV. Like, who needs quality children’s programming?

BTW, I’m pretty sure for Romney PBS covers both TV and radio. Off with their funding!

Maybe, like Gingrich, Romney will recommend sending children of the poor to orphanages. Or they could be adopted by Mormon familes and raised in the faith….

Romney has this kind of sweet, almost silly half smile on is face (it’s pasted on, right?) while talking about these cuts. Yech.

Block granting Medicaid, food stamps etc and sending money to the states without regulating them would be a hell of a boondoggle. It would probably start a big race to the bottom in benefit cuts while governors used the money for other things.

Re: PBS cuts — Yes, Federal support for PBS and public radio have been continually cut, BUT the smaller stations depend heavily on it, especially in areas with lower economic quintile incomes. And without the payments from all stations, NPR news will be have to make cut backs.

Romney does not want people to be informed. IIRC, he also wants to cut aid and grants for higher ed.

And, Ralph, yes — giving control of Medicaid and food stamps monies to the states will lead to those programs being shadows of their current forms. Bad times comin’ if R&R get control.

My Guardian colleague Ewen MacAskill is down on the floor at the RNC in Tampa – and he’s deeply unimpressed with tonight’s festivities:

It is one of the most lifeless conventions/conferences I have ever attended. Speaker after speaker at the Republican convention is coming over as flat: not just uninspiring but outright boring. Maybe, Romney has stamped his personality on the convention. The explanation may partly be lack of reaction from the stadium. There are about 1,000 Republicans crammed into the floor space in front of the platform and thousands more filling the seats round about. But there is no energy, no feedback. They are milling about, chatting to one another, generally ignoring the speakers. There is little of the raucous scenes that US conventions are normally associated with, the wild, placard-waving hordes. Maybe they are saving themselves for Paul Ryan or even Romney tomorrow.

We can but hope.

Where is the energy? These folks are the ones who are supposed to go home and make the difference for the Chosen One.

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